I like to eat, drink and be generally merry for a grumpy fat man in Tulsa, OK. I'll talk about restaurants I've tried, food I've cooked and drinks I've ordered. Take it for what it's worth...

Monday, November 7, 2011

360 Uno Trattoria and Wine Bar just needs to calm down

Steph took me over to 360 Uno Trattoria and Wine Bar the other day for some pizza. It turned out to be good food but if I only based this on the first 30 minutes you'd hear a much different story. So let's start at the beginning and see what happens.

When we walked in one of the waiters just stared at us for a moment and then seemed to just run back behind the counter. No greeting or even a smile. I'm sure we looked lost as it was our first time and we were looking for some clue on what they wanted us to do. We walked in a little further and notice a large drapery separating the section we were in with the other dining room. There was a sign that said, "Full Service Customers Only" or something like that. My first thought was "I'm not buying gas, I'm here for pizza" and my next thought was "That's not very inviting." We stood by the sign for a while as the wait staff walked by us and I was about to suggest we just leave when a kid walked up and asked if we had a reservation. Steph and I looked at each other with a puzzled look and she asked, "Do we need one? This is a pizza place right?" He said we didn't need one but they were expecting someone with a reservation. OK, that makes sense I guess. Then he said he would need to talk to the manager to see if we could have the reserved table. Keep in mind there are plenty of other tables empty so this was starting to become theater of the absurd. We waited again for a while and he finally came back and said everything was ready and we could take the "reserved" table. We're about 15 minutes into this thing now so they have my curiosity on how they'll act for the remainder of the meal. So far I'm thinking the staff doesn't care if we're here or not, the owners are fairly rude with the wording on the sign and they are trying to out pretentious the people of Westlake. Yeah, let's see how this ends. Steph and I took our seats and again waited a bit while they brought the menus and took our drink order.

We started dinner with their Polpette. It's meatballs served with a marinara sauce. The waiter even threw in some bread to go with it. We both liked the flavors in the meatballs. They weren't particularly spicy but had a nice flavor to them. The marinara added a bit of spicy to the mix and was nice and fresh. So far so good.

I also ordered a salad. I don't see it on their online menu but it was fresh and tasty. Just a simple salad of fresh arugula, I think, with a little grated Parmesan cheese and a tangy lemon vinaigrette. I like that lemon vinaigrette. My friend in Italy gave me a simple recipe to make it at home. Basically just the juice of a lemon in some olive oil with fresh herbs of your choice. It's especially good in the summer with a cool glass of vinho verde.

We ordered their Tutti Carni pizza for our meal. That just means all the meats. I had that song Tutti Fruity in my head all night for that one. Thanks Little Richard. The pizza came out fairly quickly and nice and hot. By now the waiter had lightened up a bit and was joking with us and gave us a few suggestions that he liked from their pizza menu. Things were getting better and we were starting to enjoy the evening.

They serve a rather thin crust at 360 Uno Trattoria and Wine Bar and tried to give it a nice presentation by slicing the Italian sausage lengthwise and cutting it so each slice of pizza had a long thin slice of Italian sausage right in the middle. I didn't much care for the look but they tried to make it a little more upscale so I'll give them credit for trying. The pizza had all the right textures and flavors in my opinion. The crunchy crust with the softer middle, the slightly spicy sauce, a nice mix of meats but not overboard and plenty of fresh mozzarella. We've had pizza at other places where the meat just overwhelms and at times just makes the dish too salty. They did a good job balancing the ingredients. Overall we loved the pizza.

So yeah, it started out pretty bad but 360 Uno Trattoria and Wine Bar brought it when it mattered. I'm sure we'll be back to try their pastas. I know Steph already has it written down on one of those lists of hers.